Thursday.
It’s been something of a choppy return to routine after the end-of-year holidays.
Work was due to start last week, but my body seems to be aging faster than Eskom’s geriatric fleet and, like the power stations at Hendrina, Komati and Grootvlei, I have lost the ability to generate power.
The De Ruy arthritis hit me properly: stage six out of the blue, leaving me flat, like a small dose of arsenic in my morning coffee, but different.
Thankfully.
As a result, the last day of the new ANC national conference, as well as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s closing speech and the January 8th annual statement that the head of state delivered in Mangaung on Sunday, had to happen without me.
I’m a little sad.
It would have been great, in a sort of self-flagellation, to have seen the conference through to its (stupid but satisfying) conclusion and joined the comrades in Mangaung.
Public office holders aren’t the only ones addicted to the three-ring political circus and the drama that comes with it.
The sight of the comrades descending on a city their comrades have looted and destroyed for a three-day party—all feigned concern, two-hour speeches, and promises to fix the potholes—before strutting back to the big city with toilets and ( usually ) running water for another trough year is also something to behold.
There was also the unfinished business of counting how many of the outside delegates from Sasol’s garage in Nasrec, and their comrades who lost the battle inside the conference hall, had come to the Dr. Petrus Molemela Stadium to hear Ramaphosa deliver the speech they said. . Zweli Mkhize would be doing.
I didn’t see Carl Niehaus picketing outside the stadium on the TV broadcast, but maybe the camera and I missed him, or former general secretary Ace Magashule and Mkhize, for that matter.
Mkhize supporters in Ramaphosa’s cabinet, and former NEC members who did not return to Nasrec, should be relieved that Ramaphosa is Johnny Process and is not likely to wield the ax before he gets his January. salary.
Similarly, former North West ANC Chairman Supra Mahumapelo was among those who made peace with Ramaphosa for the cameras in Mangaung, not long after voting in parliament for the president to face an impeachment hearing.
The President seemed much happier to see the Black Jesus of the North West than to meet Judas Mathabathaa, the Limpopo Premier, for now at least, on the golf day before the rally.
Ramaphosa had drawn a blank on Mathabatha when he tried to congratulate him on winning the presidency in Nasrec, making his feelings on the prime minister’s reversal of course to support him for a second term crystal clear.
Ramaphosa ignored him again on the tee shot at the ice-cold Bloemfontein golf course, another reminder that Mathabatha took the wrong turn when he tried to drag the Limpopo delegates with him along the N3 in support from Mkhize.
Ramaphosa’s allies, and the rest of the country, are clamoring for an immediate reorganization, but it is more likely to happen shortly before the State of the Union address on February 9, once the “process” is exhausted. Again.
The top seven picks at the conference have yet to meet. After that, there is a meeting of the NEC, along with the selection of the national working committee to be discussed.
There’s also a lekgotla from NEC to see the cabinet’s future shape, and one from the government, along with a trip to Davos next week for the World Economic Forum, to get through before there’s any chance of Cyril dropping the hammer on Nathi Mthethwa and the rest. of the luggage that he and we have been carrying since 2018.
If ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula and the rest of the nation are itching for a cabinet reshuffle, how must Paul Mashatile feel?
Mashatile got the ANC vice-presidency as a Christmas present but has yet to open it, metaphorically speaking, and move into the office in the West Wing of the Union Buildings that has been named after him since Dec. 20.
Mashatile has found itself in something of a procedural impasse. Parliament lists are closed until March and the two cabinet posts that Ramaphosa can fill with non-MP members are held by Mondli Gungubele and Enoch Godongwana, key allies of the president, so Mashatile may even have to wait. more than February to assume his position as vice president of the country.
